Saturday, February 9, 2013

Not even blizzards can stop us from delivering our Breakfast Links – our weekly round-up of fav links to other blogs, tumblrs, articles, photographs, and web sites, all gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• Until last month it was illegal for women in Paris to wear trousers - until a 200 year old law was changed.
• "My privie shall be round": the dream Elizabethan loo.
• The 1940 Valentine's Day blizzard in Boston.
• A short, incomplete history of American traditional tattooing.
• Poetry, pain, & opium in Victorian England: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's use of laudanum.
• Rumford Roasters, 19th c. cutting-edge culinary technology.
• Happy birthday, Charles Dickens! A timeless letter of advice from Dickens to his youngest son.
• Richard III dig: facial reconstruction shows how king may have looked.
• More Richard III: Contemporary and Tudor physical descriptions of Richard III.
• The history behind Mr. Darcy's wardrobe.
• The internal memo that allowed IBM's female employees to marry, 1951.
• The magic ring: to whom you will marry, 1896.
• Baseball recovered from Civil War battlefield.
• 17th c. paint pot still containing green paint & paintbrush discovered at Hampton Court.
• The Flapper, the embodiment of 1920s free spirits - plus Flappers and make-up.
• Food from the 1600s in art - at the market, in the kitchen, & not quite out of the reach of the hungry house pets.
• A Bacchanalian Garland, including 18th c. drinking song that became American national anthem.
• Imortalized in stone: Victorian carvingsm based on the good people of the Parish of Bury, about 1876, Bury Parish Church.
• Paris, the 1920s, and the voluptuous veloute in Blanquette de Veau.
• The Prince Regent, tomb raider.
• The role of London's "gentlemen's clubs" in Victorian politics.
• Beautiful Bristol Blue glass, which transformed fashionable dinner tables in the 1790s.
• Edwardian stereograph scenes of love, married and otherwise.
• A puppet show about wife-beating and sausage-eating: are Punch and Judy finally outdated?
• "I am the kind of woman I would run from": the inimitable Nancy Astor.
• The ingeneous Portsmouth Chain.
• Last, but surely not least, and guaranteed to finish off the rest of your day: the Museum of Online Museums.Crave more historical fabulosity? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for daily updates!

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.